RIP – Robert Morris, Pioneer of American Avant-Garde, Has Passed Away at 87

December 2nd, 2018

Robert Morris, via NYT
Robert Morris, via NYT

Artist Robert Morris, a defining voice of American conceptualism, and a contributing force in the development of an American post-war avant-garde, has passed away at the age of 87. The artist, who embraced a complex and ever-shifting series of investigations into the production, elaboration and understanding of both the art object and its function in both exhibition and broader cultural modes, passed away after a battle with pneumonia.  

Robert Morris, via NYT
Robert Morris, via NYT

First studying at the Kansas City Art Institute, Morris would move first to San Francisco and then to New York, where his work would embrace the creative prompts of Marcel Duchamp, and evolve into a series of investigations on the production and understanding of the art object’s relation to the systems that produced it, gradually evolving into a unique, ever-shifting series of objects and iconographies.  His work in the past years has included massive felt sculptures, bronze figurative sculptures and mirrored environmental installs, always drawing on space and scale to subvert and deconstruct the gallery as space of visual consumption and productive space in turn.

Robert Morris, via Guggenheim
Robert Morris, via NYT

“Robert Morris was a complicated, restless, often controversial, sometimes misunderstood, and utterly crucial figure in the history of art after 1960,” says Jeffrey Weiss, a former senior curator at the Guggenheim. “As both artist and critic, much of his work during the 1960s and 70s was foundational to so-called Minimal, post-Minimal, and conceptual art, which means that his legacy is far-reaching and indelible.”

Read more:
Robert Morris, the conceptual sculptor and leading Minimalist, has died, aged 87 [Art Newspaper]
Robert Morris, 87, Dies; Founding Minimalist Sculptor With Manifold Passions [NYT]